The only thing currently keeping the Green Knights from perfection (both this season and most of last) is five voters who disagree that they are the best team in the country. With 15 still in their corner — and a perfect 5-0 record — little else is amiss at St. Norbert.
Plattsburgh, meanwhile, has done everything they can do so far to sway voters toward their comparable accomplishments. Beginning the season with four victories — including an impressive 6-3 win over then-third ranked Elmira in their season opener — the Cardinals are positioned solidly in second and the recipient of the other five first place votes.
Moving to third from sixth this week is Oswego. The Lakers, now nearer to the rarefied air more accustom to the 2006-07 D-III champions, used victories over aforementioned Elmira (after dropping their season opener to the Soaring Eagles), Lebanon Valley, Cortland, Fredonia, and Buffalo State in overtime en route to their 5-1 start.
Having not yet played a game, Norwich remained in fourth.
Losses to Oswego and Plattsburgh were emblematic of the Soaring Eagles brutal opening schedule. Wins over Morrisville, Oswego, and Hobart, however, emboldened voters to reduce their ranking only two slots to fifth.
There is no bigger story this week than the NCHA’s University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Buoyed by the Interlock schedule with MIAC, the Pointers amassed an amazing 23-5 goal differential in five convincing wins, including a 2-1 triumph over previously fifth ranked St. Thomas on Saturday, to claim the sixth position.
Still idle Middlebury landed in the seven spot.
The MIAC Interlock was also a boon to University of Wisconsin schools Superior, Stout, and Eau Claire, who also each won five games, the only losses for Superior coming at St. Thomas and for Stout at Hamline and home against newly ranked Gustavus Adolphus. Respectively, Superior is now at eight, Stout 10, and the still-undefeated Blugolds went from being unranked to rung 12 in the D-III ladder.
Last year’s darling Adrian seems to be slowly gaining national credibility as their 4-1 start pushed them one spot up the rankings to ninth
After a 4-2 beginning to the season, Hobart dropped from eighth to 11th, hurt in the pollsters’ eyes by road losses at Buffalo State (4-0) and Elmira (4-2).
Like UW-Eau Claire at 12, schools 13 through 15 — Neumann, Gustavus Adolphus, and St. Scholastic — all were unranked in the inaugural poll.
In a hectic first in-season tally, St. Thomas (originally ranked fifth), Manhattanville (ninth), University of Wisconsin-River Falls (12), Babson (14), and Bowdoin (15) all dropped out of the top 15 of this week’s poll.
